A blog on journalism, information, public affairs, public relations, media and how it affects us. Around since 2004.

This blog is a registered periodical under the Swedish press law “the Freedom of the Press Act”, Permit number: 2008-085
Statement of Blogging Ethics

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Trend Survey Innovation Communication

It’s hard to communicate the difference between “invention” and “innovation”. While an invention is a solution on a problem, an innovation is an invention that has been put into practice. A nail is an invention. Nailing a fence is an innovation. It’s innovations that create growth, not the inventions.

In Sweden hardly any media covers “innovation”, only “inventions” and “inventors”. I did a quick search in the full-text databases Affärsdata, Mediearkivet och Presstext and found 912 articles containing the word “innovationssystem” – “Innovation System”, out of more than 10 million articles in Swedish press and recorded broadcasts since 1982. That is 0.01 percent.

It’s not a Swedish phenomenon. Even in German companies and research institutions have a hard time making new ideas, products, and technologies publicly known, even if German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder branded it the “year of innovations”.

The German MFG Baden-Württemberg Agency for IT and Media, together with the Department of Communication Studies and Journalism at the University of Hohenheim, made an interesting survey, INNOVATE 2004, on the topic of how journalists and corporate communication experts look on “innovations”. The results of the survey is published (only in German, unfortunately) in a report.

Some of the results include:

Every second journalist and more than 40% of the corporate communication experts were of the opinion that companies do not provide sufficient material on innovations.

A second reason for the press coverage below average was – self-critically – identified as lying in shortcomings of the media themselves: two thirds of the interviewees believed that a lack of specialized knowledge among journalists prevented a more extensive coverage.

The inflational use of the term “innovation” is also perceived as a barrier to successful Innovation Communication.

About Me

Views in this blog are not necessarily shared by my employer. Twitter: @jansandred. Currently I'm Program Director at VINNOVA, Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems, and also PR and Marketing Commissioner at The Competitiveness Institute - TCI. 2004 Innovation Journalism Fellow and Business Reporter at San Francisco Chronicle 2005 Senior Consultant at Grey Communications Europe. 1994 to 1999 member of the Board of Directors, Talentum Sweden AB. I have done reference documentation for World Wide Web Consortium and have written several books on IT, the latest being "Managing Open Source Projects" (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., in Japanese at Ohmsha, Ltd.). I have a M.Sc. in IT and Mathematics from Uppsala University, a degree in Chemistry, as well as a degree in Journalism. I frequently speak at and chair seminars and conferences and have appeared as a guest commentator on Swedish TV2 news program Rapport and News TV4. I also have a Master’s Certificate and is President of the Chamber Choir of Uppsala Cathedral.